by Marja-Leena

advent calendars

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from Virtual Finland*

This morning, as I flipped the calendar pages over to the last page, it hit me that it is now December or Joulukuu (Finnish for Christmas month). So much to do and what do I do today instead of writing cards or making lists? Reading blogs and browsing for calendars!

I was inspired by my Finnish blog friend Viides rooli’s post today about an online advent calendar and by the memories it brought back.

How many of you, my dear readers, had these secular advent calendars made of card with little windows for the first 24 days of December? Each day a window was opened and a little chocolate treat was enjoyed. What anticipation counting the days to Christmas! We had these every year for our children when young. I kind of miss them now but they don’t seem as nice as they used to be so I don’t bother for us grown-ups.

Online advent calendars are such a delightful alternative so I ended up browsing through my blog and my bookmarks to find past ones that I’d gathered. Most were dead but here are some Finnish/English ones that are enjoyable, especially if you have some young children in your life to share them with. They help me get into the Christmas mood, especially since our weather is still too warm here. (I need snow!) I will send this link to our granddaughters who are in London at present. We’ll all be counting to the 22nd when they fly back here for Christmas.

Positiivarit Christmas Calendar 2008* with music. The first song is in Finnish, a popular children’s song that I remember singing as a child in a group, wearing elf costumes and dancing around the tree, awaiting Santa at the annual Finnish Pikku Joulu or family Christmas Party.

Kidzone Finland calendar*
Aura Library Christmas calendar
Interactive customizable advent calendars
Virtual Finland* has a selection to browse through.

Do you have some favourite advent calendars you’d like to share?

* denotes expired link which has been removed, sadly

December 1, 2008 in Culture, Finland, Estonia & Finno-Ugric 10 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

homey day

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a lazy Saturday indoors
a drizzly misty rain outdoors
lingering long after breakfast
reading snippets from the weekend paper
to each other
a little tidying and watering plants
a soothing massage on sore legs and aching knee
a sweet nap in cool bedroom under warm duvet
awakened by a lovely voice and piano
daughter and friend practicing for upcoming Winter Party
aroma of roasting chicken and root vegetables
a video of an apple, baking

November 29, 2008 in Home 5 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

Eugene Onegin

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Painting by Michael Abraham

We love opera, as some readers may know from the few times I’ve written about it here. Most exciting for us is to enjoy the colourful and lively visuals of theatre along with the inspiring music. We try to catch some of the offerings on television or DVD and very occasionally indulge and attend a life performance.

In the past, we’ve resisted season tickets to any one musical organization, thinking we’ll dip into a variety of offerings in our city. However we have a tendency to be lazy and leave decisions to the last moment, then end up not going out as much as we should for our own pleasure. Commitment-phobia perhaps? This fall, however, we impulsively decided to get some discounted season tickets to our very own Vancouver Opera.

So this past Saturday evening we attended the opening night of the first opera of this season, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. It was a delight! New to us as a whole production, sung in Russian with English subtitles overhead, we loved it all – the stage sets, costumes, the singers, chorus, dancers, the music and the drama. As others have written, Onegin is full of many contrasts especially country vs city, peasant vs upper class Czarist society, and so full of the emotions of melancholy, love, pride, jealousy, anger, as much of opera is.

Some of the lead performers are Canadian, including Rhoslyn Jones (as Tatyana) from Abbotsford, east of Vancouver. Hearing real Russian rolling from the voice of Oleg Balashov as poet Lensky was a treat for Vancouverites. Our very favourite voice, though, turned out to be that of bass Peter Volpe as Prince Gremin.

In doing my homework on this opera, I listened to some podcasts and discovered there’s even a blog. There are now some reviews at both sites, this one being my favourite.

We are looking forward to the rest of this season of opera.

Addendum Dec.1st, 2008: Photographer Alex Waterhouse-Hayward attended opening night and wrote the best thing I’ve read on it.

November 25, 2008 in Culture, Music 11 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

wings

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Allow me a little self-congratulatory pat on the back – qarrtsiluni has my photo Wings up! And I’m told that this is my tenth publication in it, and that you can see all of them here.

qarrtsiluni’s current theme Journaling the Apocalypse is a fascinating one with a rich and thoughtful variety of writings, video, music and photos. If you don’t already know this online literary and artistic journal, please do have a visit, it’s worth it! Guest editors and themes change bi-monthly. This time founding and managing editors Beth Adams and Dave Bonta have been doing the honours. Great job and thanks for including me!

The above photo, by the way, is not the one shown in qarrtsiluni but is another one from the same series of images I took of a found object a few months ago.

Added November 23rd, 2008:
Thanks to a lovely comment from Maria below, I thought I should mention there are a couple of other photos in this series that can be seen in a post about poetry postcards and a collaboration with Tom Montag at Postal Poetry called Blue. Enjoy!

November 21, 2008 in Being an Artist, Found Objects, Photoworks 14 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

Male Self-Portraits

500 Years of Male Self Portraits in Western Art is another* wonderful video slide show set to music, created by Philip Scott Johnson.

I like the provided list of the artists in order of appearance, useful for the few I did not recognize or remember:
0:08 – Leonardo da Vinci 1452-1519
0:15 – Francisco Goya 1746-1828
0:22 – Albrecht Dürer 1471-1528
0:29 – Sir Joshua Reynolds 1723-1792
0:35 – Rembrandt 1606-1669
0:42 – Andy Warhol 1928-1987
0:48 – William-Adolphe Bouguereau 1825-1905
0:55 – Henri Matisse 1869-1954
1:02 – Eugène Delacroix 1798-1863
1:09 – Jean-François Millet 1814-1875
1:15 – Jan van Eyck 1395-1441
1:22 – Peter Paul Rubens 1577-1640
1:28 – James McNeill Whistler 1834-1903
1:35 – John Singer Sargent 1856-1925
1:42 – Kazimir Malevich 1878-1935
1:49 – Nicolas Poussin 1594-1665
1:55 – Paul Cézanne 1839-1906
2:02 – Paul Gauguin 1848-1903
2:08 – Vincent Van Gogh 1853-1890
2:15 – Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1828-1882
2:22 – Diego Velázquez 1599-1660
2:28 – Nicholas Hilliard 1547-1619
2:35 – Anthony van Dyck 1599-1641
2:41 – Titian 1485-1576
2:48 – Paolo Veronese 1528-1588
2:55 – Lucas Cranach the Elder 1472-1553
3:01 – Édouard Manet 1832-1883
3:08 – Pablo Picasso 1881-1973

Thanks to artist Harry Bell for featuring this at Boogie Street!

*Some of you may remember the fabulous slide show of Women in Art that was featured on a lot of blogs last year. After seeing the above, I revisited my post on that and noticed that it was no longer working, so I’ve updated the link. It is also by Philip Scott Johnson so check out the interesting information and more fascinating artist videos by him. What great time-sinks!

November 20, 2008 in Other artists 8 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

fog, frost and sun

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Thick fog all night and this morning, then sudden brilliance magnified by mirroring water.

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Rising light reveals season’s first frost on cold glass. Capture it quickly before sun’s melting touch!

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Long low golden light across rooms casts shadow plays.

November 19, 2008 in Being an Artist, Home 7 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

fairy happy birthday

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We’ve just had a delightful iChat (video chat) with our youngest granddaughter Niamh on her third birthday. She opened her birthday presents in front of us, then promptly began to paint with the watercolours and paper we gave her. A young Chagall or Kandinsky in the making!

Isn’t this a fabulous card that daughter Anita made while she was visiting last week? We brainstormed the idea for this one, based on a somewhat similar one I’d made for her older sister three weeks ago. We selected crops from photos of flowers from her garden, Niamh on a swing, and the wings of a moth. Niamh loves this, adores her stripes and now wants wings!

What a great invention this iChat is for keeping in touch with family far away, in this case in London, UK. When they were living here, the granddaughters had weekly video chats with their other grandparents in Birmingham, England. We only wished we could have had a taste of the fairy cakes!

(New readers may be interested in reading about the day of Niamh’s birth, also the opening of my solo exhibition, forever remembered together.)

November 16, 2008 in Being an Artist, Current Events 5 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

motivation

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I felt really happy this fall with the progress on my art work, with ARKEO #4 and #5.

However this month my artmaking has suddenly stalled, as have fall garden cleanup and long walks, and it’s not just the fault of our dull rainy days of November. I sit too much in front of the computer and over newspapers reading about elections (yay, Obama!) and the economy; even my usually rare TV viewing has jumped.

I’ve lost my motivation, even though the desire is still there, slowly becoming buried as I dull my senses. Living with pain, disrupted sleep and frequent visits for treatments are my current preoccupation and distraction these days. Suddenly feeling older and crankier, I keep reminding myself that many others maintain their spirits under far greater health challenges, like fighting cancer. Impatient patient though I am, I believe that I’ll get better with the care of my gifted naturopath, given a little time. I just hope I’ll not lose the creative desire if this lasts too long, for my past experience has been that it takes me a while to get those juices flowing again after too long an interruption.

Another interruption is coming up fast: Christmas. Our eldest daughter was visiting this week and she became excited by the new Christmas issue of the Martha Stewart magazine, thus reminding me it’s that time of year again. Our whole family is coming home this year so there will be much to prepare. I think this year I may forego making my own cards for the first time in years. Disliking shopping as I do maybe I’ll take up sewing again and make some of the gifts this year like I used to many years ago. I still have a large stash of fabrics. Maybe that will keep some of those creative juices flowing.

Wishes for renewed health, energy and motivation much appreciated!

November 15, 2008 in Being an Artist, Home 19 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

remember peace

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It’s Remembrance Day here, and the weather matches the sad occasion. Each year on this day, I reluctantly acknowledge this day, understanding the sacrifices made by so many soldiers in wars. I am sad for the millions of innocent lives lost and hurt by greedy leaders who themselves are never armed and harmed. Yet each year, I am more and more angry that history repeats itself and there seems to be no learning the lesson of peace, of non-violent communication.

Please visit last year’s post, my favourite of several written over a few years of blogging. I love the comments.

November 11, 2008 in Canada and BC, Current Events 7 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

ARKEO #5

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ARKEO #5
archival inkjet and engraving
78.5 x 58 cm.

Last month I finished another addition to my ongoing ARKEO series. I used Sintra again as I did for ARKEO #4. This time, instead of making a collagraph, I made a very spontaneous engraving. I’m very pleased with the result.

UPDATE summer 2012: The ARKEO series may now be viewed in my new GALLERY (link also found on the top of the left bar)

November 9, 2008 in Arkeo, Printworks 14 Comments »